Veteran performer, promoter spread aloha through music

1of 2Patrick Landeza performs this month at the Cue in Concord. “It’s aloha everywhere,” he says of the venue.Photo: Courtesy Patrick Landeza

2of 2Henry Kapono at Duke's WaikikiPhoto: Bill C. Hale

Island music means different things to different people. Still, no one can deny the impact that two concert series have had on the genre.

—Jeanne Cooper

There:

King of Duke’s

Singer-songwriter Henry Kapono has been playing Sunday afternoons at Duke’s Waikiki for close to two dozen years, long enough that “people plan their vacation around it,” he says. “I’ll walk right off the plane and go there, because I don’t like to miss it.”

Part of the reason for his punctuality is the view: “I can see Diamond Head, catamarans, surfers,” says the 68-year-old performer. “There’s nothing like it.” But he also enjoys demonstrating his versatility in rock, pop, jazz and classic Hawaiian songs, a genre-spanning talent that first brought him fame in the 1970s.

“I can play almost anything,” notes Kapono, whose early career was showcased last spring at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Among the concert posters and other memorabilia on exhibit was a picture of him outside Tower Records in San Francisco with former partner Cecilio Rodriguez.

As Cecilio & Kapono, they were one of Hawaii’s most successful recording acts, with soft rock English-language hits such as “Sailin’,” “The Nightmusic” and “We Are Friends.”

At the same time, Hawaiian cultural consciousness was on the rise, reflected in musical acts such as Hui Ohana, Sons of Hawaii and Sunday Manoa, who sang traditional songs in Hawaiian.

Kapono, who went solo in 1981, earned a Grammy nomination for his first Hawaiian-language album, 2006’s “The Wild Hawaiian.” But true to form, he put his own spin — in this case, hard-edged rock — on classic Hawaiian songs. At Duke’s, along with regular gigs on Maui and the Big Island, you’ll hear him perform in Hawaiian and English.

Among songs in the latter is “Duke’s on Sunday,” once covered by Jimmy Buffett and celebrating the Waikiki show’s easygoing vibe. “I try to keep everyone happy,” Kapono says.

Berkeley-born slack key guitarist Patrick Landeza, 45, has pursued many careers, often simultaneously, over the years, from social sciences teacher and caterer to jam and jewelry maker, children’s book author and memoirist, and performing and recording artist.

In 2012, he became the first person born outside of Hawaii to receive a Na Hoku Hanohano Award, the top honor in the islands’ music industry, winning Slack Key Guitar Album of the Year for his sixth CD, “Slack Key Huakai.” Although his artistic huakai, or journey, includes a 2017 Na Hoku nomination for another CD, “Hoomanao” (“Remember”), his impact on the Bay Area’s Hawaiian music scene has been even greater.

Landeza started promoting concerts by the masters of slack key guitar — Cyril Pahinui and the late Dennis Kamakahi among them — while only in his 20s. In 2011, he joined forces with sound engineer Carole Davis to create the Cue, an 85-seat venue modeled on house concerts, “which was unheard of then in Hawaiian music,” he notes.

The space allows Landeza to serve a preshow island-style dinner while performers, such as Bobby Moderow earlier this month, mingle with delighted fans. Landeza later introduces the headliners and often performs with them. “It’s aloha everywhere,” he says.

Although the Cue may be smaller than other venues, “it’s about building a stronger Hawaiian community, and also investing and reinvesting in Hawaiian acts,” Landeza says. “Investments” include once-unknown Hawaii-based bands such as Kupaoa, now multiple Na Hoku winners, while “reinvestments” include Marlene Sai and Kenneth Makuakane, “all of these acts that I remember as a child.”

Presenting shows at the Cue and other Bay Area stages can be hard work, especially on top of a day job teaching high school and raising five children with his wife, Jennifer, but Landeza says he has plenty of incentive to continue.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the music, my wife and the kids, and the Hawaiian music lovers community — and the Cue has allowed us to sustain that.”

A former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle's Travel section, Jeanne Cooper writes its weekly Globetrotter column. She also frequently covers Hawaii and Monterey/Carmel for The Chronicle and SFGate.com, home of her Aloha Friday and Central Coasting columns and Hawaii Insider blog. Before joining The Chronicle in 1997, Jeanne contributed to several guidebooks on Boston and Washington, D.C., while an editor and correspondent for the Boston Globe and Washington Post.